The WQC is an inidividual written quiz that is organised around the globe at
the same time. In Western Europe the time is 3pm to 5pm on June 3rd (which means
it will be morning in Canada, evening in India, late evening in Malaysia; for
countries like Australia where this would be past midnight, a difference of max
2 hours is allowed).

The quiz consists of 240 questions, to be answered in a maximum allowed time
of 120 minutes. The questions are divided over 8 categories of 30 questions
each, as listed below:

The total score of an individual is the sum of the best 7 categories. So the
worst category can be dropped (this was originally done to attract more women to
the competition so they could drop 'Sports' and now it is part of the rules).
The result on the worst category however will be taken into account in case of
an ex aequo.

To assure fairness, the knowledge of English (or any other language) should
not be a deciding factor. That's why for the WQC all questions will be
translated to the native language of the participants. In Belgium most people
get the questions in Dutch, in Finland in Finnish etc. They will all be allowed
to answer in there native language too.

1b. How is the local organisation done?

The people participating in the event, will have to be assembled in one venue
to ensure there is no foul play (like working in groups, taking more than the
alloted time, using reference works or the internet). We are also thinking of
way in which we can assure this with people participating from home (especially
in large countries), but we have not yet reached concensus on that point.

The first thing to do is to designate a country representative. This guy will
coordinate things in that country and will normally not participate.

If wanted, he/she can be involved in the voting for the question selection
(see 1c).

Obviously it is handy (or perhaps even necessary) if we could talk to this
person beforehand. That can be done through Skype or in a personal meeting.

So what then needs to be done, is renting a venue, advertise the event among
the country's quiz players and get the inscriptions going. If you are able to
get a cheap venue at the university for instance that would be great. If likely
only a couple of players will attend, the venue can be someone's living room at
no cost at all.

In that venue, you'd need a PC to be able to e-mail the results as soon as
possible after the completion of the quiz. We also use a computer projector to
make it a bit nicer, but that is not a necessity.

Obviously, a big country can have multiple venues (India will have at least 4
this year: Delhi, Pune, Bangalore and Calcutta), but in every venue we need a
trustworthy person to oversee the event and send the scores.

The idea is that within 1-2 hours after the end of the event the complete
scores are e-mailed to some central location (normally in the UK) where they are
all processed and the results are then re-distributed to the various venues so
everywhere the result can be announced.

What we do in Belgium is we organise a team quiz that starts at 8pm and the
results are then announced during a break at 10pm. That way people of something
else to do except wait for the results. But that's the choice of every country
of course.

1c. Where do the questions come from?

The set of 240 questions, divided over 8 different categories, is made by an
international team of professional or semi-professional question setters. At the
last WQC the team comprised of one person from the UK, one from Estonia, one
from India, a group from the US and one from Belgium. The team makes sure that
every subject is represented and also that the questions are fairly spread
geographically (for instance special precautions are made that not too much
emphasis is laid on Anglo-American culture, but that also questions on for
instance French, German, Spanish but also African and Asian subjects are fairly
evenly represented).

The questions that were set, are then sent to the country responsibles who
can vote what questions actually will make the quiz (we normally make 3x too
many questions) and in some cases can veto questions which they deem would give
an unfair advantage to any given country.

All the questions are originally set in English, but are translated to the
native language of the quiz players (Except in India, where because of the
multitude of languages English is used as lingua franca).

For this year's event we are already far in the making of the questions. The
voting will probably take place around April.

1d. Previous events

In 2004, 2005 and 2006 the WQC took place in venues ranging from the
Manchester United Stadion, the Silverstone Formula-1 circuit to a living room in
Kuala Lumpur. Follow the link tyo learn more: